great freedom. The Kūrds as a race are proud, faithful and hospitable, and have rude but strict feelings of honour. They are, however, much under the influence of dervishes, and when their fanaticism is aroused their habitual lawlessness is apt to degenerate into savage barbarity. They are not deficient in martial spirit, but have an innate dislike to the restraints of military service. The country is rich in traditions and legends, and in lyric and in epic poems, which have been handed down from earlier times and are recited in a weird melancholy tone.
Antiquities.—Kūrdistān abounds in antiquities of the most varied and interesting character. But it has been very little opened up to modern research. A series of rock-cut cuneiform inscriptions extend from Malatia on the west to Miandoāb (in Persia) on the east, and from the banks of the Aras on the north to Rowanduz on the south, which record the glories of a Turanian dynasty, who ruled the country of Nairi during the 8th and 7th centuries, B.C., contemporaneously with the lower Assyrian empire. Intermingled with these are a few genuine Assyrian inscriptions of an earlier date; and in one instance, at Van, a later tablet of Xerxes brings the record down to the period of Grecian history. The most ancient monuments of this class, however, are to be found at Holwān and in the neighbourhood, where the sculptures and inscriptions belong probably to the Guti and Luli tribes, and date from the early Babylonian period.
In the northern Kūrdish districts which represent the Arzanene, Intilene, Anzitene, Zabdicene, and Moxuene of the ancients, there are many interesting remains of Roman cities, e.g. at Arzen, Miyafarikin (anc. Martyropolis), Sisauronon, and the ruins of Dunisir near Dara, which Sachau identified with the Armenian capital of Tigranocerta. Of the Macedonian and Parthian periods there are remains both sculptured and inscribed at several points in Kūrdistān; at Bisitun or Behistun (q.v.), in a cave at Amadīa, at the Mithraic temple of Kereftū, on the rocks at Sir Pūl-o-Zohab near the ruins of Holwān, and probably in some other localities, such as the Bālik country between Lahijān and Koi-Sanjāk; but the most interesting site in all Kūrdistān, perhaps in all western Asia, is the ruined fire temple of Pāī Kūlī on the southern frontier of Suleimanīa. Among the débris of this temple, which is scattered over a bare hillside, are to be found above one hundred slabs, inscribed with Parthian and Pahlavi characters, the fragments of a wall which formerly supported the eastern face of the edifice, and bore a bilingual legend of great length, dating from the Sassanian period. There are also remarkable Sassanian remains in other parts of Kūrdistān—at Salmūs to the north, and at Kermānshāh and Kasr-i-Shīrīn on the Turkish frontier to the south.
Language.—The Kūrdish language, Kermānjī, is an old Persian patois, intermixed to the north with Chaldaean words and to the south with a certain Turanian element which may not improbably have come down from Babylonian times. Several peculiar dialects are spoken in secluded districts in the mountains, but the only varieties which, from their extensive use, require to be specified are the Zaza and the Gurān. The Zaza is spoken throughout the western portion of the Dersim country, and is said to be unintelligible to the Kermānjī-speaking Kūrds. It is largely intermingled with Armenian, and may contain some trace of the old Cappadocian, but is no doubt of the same Aryan stock as the standard Kūrdish. The Gurān dialect again, which is spoken throughout Ardelān and Kermānshāh[1] chiefly differs from the northern Kūrdish in being entirely free from any Semitic intermixture. It is thus somewhat nearer to the Persian than the Kermānjī dialect, but is essentially the same language. It is a mistake to suppose that there is no Kūrdish literature. Many of the popular Persian poets have been translated into Kūrdish, and there are also books relating to the religious mysteries of the Ali-Illāhis in the hands of the Dersimlis to the north and of the Gurāns of Kermānshāh to the south. The New Testament in Kurdish was printed at Constantinople in 1857. The Rev. Samuel Rhea published a grammar and vocabulary of the Hakkāri dialect in 1872. In 1879 there appeared, under the auspices of the imperial academy of St Petersburg a French-Kūrdish dictionary compiled originally by Mons. Jaba, many years Russian consul at Erzerum, but completed by Ferdinand Justi by the help of a rich assortment of Kurdish tales and ballads, collected by Socin and Prym in Assyria.
Religion.—The great body of the nation, in Persia as well as in Turkey, are Sunnis of the Shafi’ite sect, but in the recesses of the Dersim to the north and of Zagros to the south there are large half-pagan communities, who are called indifferently Ali-Illahi and Kizjil-bāsh, and who hold tenets of some obscurity, but of considerable interest. Outwardly professing to be Shi’ites or “followers of Ali,” they observe secret ceremonies and hold esoteric doctrines which have probably descended to them from very early ages, and of which the essential condition is that there must always be upon the earth a visible manifestation of the Deity. While paying reverence to the supposed incarnations of ancient days, to Moses, David, Christ, Ali and his tutor Salmān-ul-Farisi, and several of the Shi’ite imams and saints, they have thus usually some recent local celebrity at whose shrine they worship and make vows; and there is, moreover, in every community of Ali-Illahis some living personage, not necessarily ascetic, to whom, as representing the godhead, the superstitious tribesmen pay almost idolatrous honours. Among the Gurāns of the south the shrine of Baba Yadgār, in a gorge of the hills above the old city of Holwān, is thus regarded with a supreme veneration. Similar institutions are also found in other parts of the mountains, which may be compared with the tenets of the Druses and Nosairis in Syria and the Ismailites in Persia.
History.—With regard to the origin of the Kūrds, it was formerly considered sufficient to describe them as the descendants of the Carduchi, who opposed the retreat of the Ten Thousand through the mountains, but modern research traces them far beyond the period of the Greeks. At the dawn of history the mountains overhanging Assyria were held by a people named Gūtū, a title which signified “a warrior,” and which was rendered in Assyrian by the synonym of Gardu or Kardu, the precise term quoted by Strabo to explain the name of the Cardaces (Κάρδακες). These Gūtū were a Turanian tribe of such power as to be placed in the early cuneiform records on an equality with the other nations of western Asia, that is, with the Syrians and Hittites, the Susians, Elamites, and Akkadians of Babylonia; and during the whole period of the Assyrian empire they seem to have preserved a more or less independent political position. After the fall of Nineveh they coalesced with the Medes, and, in common with all the nations inhabiting the high plateaus of Asia Minor, Armenia and Persia, became gradually Aryanized, owing to the immigration at this period of history of tribes in overwhelming numbers which, from whatever quarter they may have sprung, belonged certainly to the Aryan family.
The Gūtū or Kūrdu were reduced to subjection by Cyrus before he descended upon Babylon, and furnished a contingent of fighting men to his successors, being thus mentioned under the names of Saspirians and Alarodians in the muster roll of the army of Xerxes which was preserved by Herodotus.
In later times they passed successively under the sway of the Macedonians, the Parthians, and Sassanians, being especially befriended, if we may judge from tradition as well as from the remains still existing in the country, by the Arsacian monarchs, who were probably of a cognate race. Gotarzes indeed, whose name may perhaps be translated “chief of the Gūtū,” was traditionally believed to be the founder of the Gurāns, the principal tribe of southern Kūrdistān,[2] and his name and titles are still preserved in a Greek inscription at
- ↑ The Gurān are mentioned in the Mesalik-el-Absār as the dominant tribe in southern Kūrdistān in the 14th century, occupying very much the same seats as at present, from the Hamadan frontier to Shahrizor. Their name probably signifies merely “the mountaineers,” being derived from gur or giri, “a mountain,” which is also found in Zagros, i.e. za-giri, “beyond the mountain,” or Pusht-i-koh, as the name is translated in Persian. They are a fine, active and hardy race, individually brave, and make excellent soldiers, though in appearance very inferior to the tribal Kūrds of the northern districts. These latter indeed delight in gay colours, while the Gurāns dress in the most homely costume, wearing coarse blue cotton vests, with felt caps and coats. In a great part of Kūrdistān the name Gurān has become synonymous with an agricultural peasantry, as opposed to the migratory shepherds.
- ↑ “The Kalhūr tribe are traditionally descended from Gudarz-ibn-Gīo, whose son Roham was sent by Bahman Keiāni to destroy Jerusalem and bring the Jews into captivity. This Roham is the individual usually called Bokht-i-nasser (Nebuchadrezzar) and he ultimately succeeded to the throne. The neighbouring country has ever since remained in the hands of his descendants, who are called Gurāns” (Sheref-Nama, Persian MS.). The same popular tradition still exists in the country, and ΓΩΤΑΡΖΗΟ ΓΕΟΠΟΘΡΟΣ is found on the rock at Behistun, showing that Gudarz-ibn-Gīo was really an historic personage. See Journ. Roy. Geog. Soc. ix. 114.
